


The Bamboo Bridge

by iberiandoctor (jehane)



Category: Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
Genre: A career in philanthropy, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bridge building techniques, Charitable Works, Christmas Presents, F/F, Getting Together, Misses Clause Challenge, New Year's Eve, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-25 04:13:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17114252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists.





	The Bamboo Bridge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mardia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mardia/gifts).



> Beta by raspberryhunter and prinzenhasserin <3

The current issue of _the Singapore Tattle’s Christmas 2022 Gift Guide_ was already late. Across the city state, those whose shopping habits shadowed the latest trends would have to wait to find out what Society kids wanted to find under their trees this Christmas morning. 

Still, Eleanor knew that the Tattle editors would put Christmas itself on hold if it meant getting an exclusive with the Young family and its newest addition.

“Our tagline’s going to be _December’s not just for Christmas_ ,” the young woman with pink-streaked hair said earnestly in a rapidfire West Coast accent. She looked barely out of her teens, but her resume had said she was a senior writer responsible for the annual Tattle Ball and stories such as their June edition’s _Where You’ll Find Araminta Lee And Her Family These Summer Holidays!_

“Then I thought for the summary lead we could go with something to tug the heart-strings, like _Get Your Tattletot Involved In These Charity Organisations_. Like, charity begins at home? And the best way to help our little ones grow up with a greater awareness of the needy is to do volunteer work as a family! Parents and grandparents can make sure charitable activities become fun and meaningful experiences, am I right? And then we’ll feature the WWF’s _Love Our Bamboo Forest_ initiative, and the Methodist Missions Association, and Tyersall Foundation’s _Castles to Create_ , just like we said we would.”

Eleanor suppressed a sigh. The girl meant well, and the article’s focus on _Castles to Create_ would please Philip, whose board had of late been focused on boosting Tyersall’s corporate social responsibility metrics.

In any case, she would gladly endure this interview, and the invasion of Tattle photographers and lighting assistants and stylists, if it meant an afternoon with her grandson and his mother.

Not that Arabella was anything less than fastidious about Nicholas Junior spending time with the family. Mother and son would come for dinner at the house every Saturday without fail, and then after the 10 am service at Barker Road Methodist, they would join the Sunday lunch ritual with Ah Ma and the other cousins. 

Nick would accompany his wife and son when he wasn’t travelling — which, these days, was more often than not. As executive director of Tyersall’s emerging markets businesses, he’d managed to catch the real estate boom in North Korea after the second Trump-Kim summit; this year he’d spent enough time in Pyongyang to almost qualify for tax residency status. When he’d shown up with a cold to Ah Ma’s birthday lunch, Su Yi hadn’t let the matter rest.

“Ah Boy, you work too hard,” she had said to Nick, staring at the dark circles around his eyes. And then, to Eleanor, a finely-calibrated reproach: “You must take better care of him.”

Unpalatable as it was, Eleanor couldn’t fault this sentiment. After all, it was exactly what Eleanor kept telling herself. 

For the most part, she thought she had succeeded. And those few failures made her that much more determined to do better, for both her son and his boy.

She rose to her feet, now, to signal that their business was concluded, and led the young woman into the main reception hall where the Tattle shoot was taking place. They’d set up several kinds of lighting equipment and reflective screens beside her seasonal ornaments and the vintage Christmas tree, and harassed-looking young men and women were milling about on her Ottoman rugs in a scene of carefully-controlled chaos.

In the eye of the storm, under the focus of a dozen digital camera lenses, was the pride and joy of the Young family, perched like an emperor on a rocking horse decorated in the Tang Dynasty style.

Nicky was very much like his father, guileless and curious and instinctively kind — a trusting soul who needed to be taught to deal with those who would take advantage of him. She loved him as much as she’d loved Nick; so much it was an almost-constant ache. 

“Nanna!” he exclaimed, an Anglicised version of the honorific she’d given herself (there was, after all, only one Ah Ma in the family). The Tattle stylists had put him in a mandarin’s hat and a silky jacket embroidered with bamboo leaves; his tiny designer shoes lit up as he leaped off the rocking horse and rushed past the photographers across the polished floor to greet her. 

He flung his arms around her knees, oblivious to the silenced cameras he’d left in his wake.

“Let’s take five,” the shoot director suggested, hastily, and Eleanor sighed.

“Young man, it seems you ran off before these people could finish their work.” 

Nicky turned around to observe the disruption he’d caused. “I didn’t know,” he murmured, chastened. “I’m sorry.” 

Eleanor placed a hand on his round cheek. “That’s all right,” she said. “You’ll do better next time.” After all, he was still young; not yet four. He had plenty of time to learn to check his instincts and to wield the power he would inherit. 

Arabella had followed in Nicky’s wake, as she’d always done from the time the boy could walk, a stylishly-dressed shadow of her child. She was soft-spoken and accommodating, as much a homebody as her influencer sister was outgoing, preferring to stay home when the other ladies had headed out to party it up at 1880 or the Podium Lounge or wherever it was that young people spent their time nowadays. 

“Don’t worry,” she murmured. “We can always reschedule the shoot. It’s going to be time for his nap soon, anyway, and he wants to hang out with Nanna.”

Eleanor frowned at this. The girl was unobjectionable in all respects save this one — she had begun to let her love for her son cloud her judgment. She would indulge the boy when he needed to be reprimanded; would hold him back when he should be given free rein. 

It had been the hardest thing in the world, but Eleanor had not made the same mistake.

Perhaps the time had come at last. The boy was almost four. The age that Nick had been when Eleanor had sent him away to live with his Ah Ma for his own good.

Under Eleanor’s tutelage, Nicky would grow strong and powerful, like a mighty oak capable of withstanding the heavy responsibilities of his heritage.

She put Nicky away from her and straightened her spine. “No, that would inconvenience everyone here. I will not have my grandson raised to be rude to his elders.”

Her voice was icy. Arabella flushed scarlet, but she made no response to the rebuke. Instead she took Nicky by the hand and ushered him back to his original position under the cameras.

As she studied the dutiful bend of her daughter-in-law’s dark head, against her will, Eleanor remembered a very different kind of girl, who would not have remained silent. 

She’d seen the fire in Rachel from the first time they’d met. She’d thought that fire meant Rachel would never be enough. She’d thought that, like all Americans, Rachel would never be _kaki lang_ , one of them — she’d never love Nick enough to put his interests and his family ahead of her own. 

She’d been wrong about that last part, at least. Rachel had loved Nick enough to let him go for his own good; the same way as Eleanor had, so many years ago.

What was it that brazen girl had said to her, after she’d discarded the bamboo tile and had let Eleanor win? “Nick will eventually find someone else, someone you approve of. And when that happens, when you hold your perfect grandchild in your arms, you’ll understand that you owe your happiness to a poor, raised by a single mother, low-class immigrant nobody — who might not have been enough for you, but who loved your son enough to set him free.”

She then showed her winning hand (bamboos, a set of North Wind, a pair of _hong zhong_ ), and walked away. 

Eleanor hadn’t gone after her. She had let her leave: the fiery, unsuitable American teacher who had loved her son and who understood that sometimes there were games that you couldn’t win, even if you had all the bamboos in the deck.

It was only after Nick had married Arabella that Eleanor had realised it. Eleanor hadn’t won, either. 

Arabella was the second daughter to the trillion-yuan Lee business empire and luxury hotel chain. Like Aramanita, she’d been a child model for Alexander McQueen. She had an MBA from Brown University. Her dowry and her family were impeccable; she’d been the perfect hostess for Nick’s business dinners and packed Nick’s suitcases every time he went away. She’d given Nick and Eleanor and their family a perfect son. Everything about her had been satisfactory, and still, somehow, it wasn’t enough. 

As the photo shoot resumed, Eleanor surveyed the vastness of her good fortune — her prospering empire and family, the grandchild growing like a weed under her roof — and idly wondered if she should write to Rachel. She knew Nick was still in touch with Rachel, that Astrid had gone to visit her in New York in the wake of the divorce from Michael. It would be a small courtesy for Eleanor to reach out and let her son’s old girlfriend know she had been right after all. 

She twisted the Colombian emerald on her finger. It was Christmas, after all; time for mending fences and building bridges, and uneasy détente.

 

***

 

 _NO SIGNAL_ , proclaimed the MYTelecom provider. It had been that way for hours. 

Rachel suppressed a sigh. This was Week Three in the Batang Valley and she’d still hadn’t managed to get a decent connection. 

The Tyersall Foundation might be developing a sustainable eco-town in the mountains at the border between Sarawak and Kalimantan, and investing in East Malaysia’s new satellite program, but even they hadn’t been able to establish decent 6G coverage this far south of Kuching.

She had spent her first week in Sarawak trying, anyway, from one of the suites at the luxury hotel which Tyersall had bought from the Four Seasons Group. It was winter break at NYU, and Rachel was planning to take the spring semester off to spend on her overdue sabbatical, but there were still postgraduate drafts to comment on and nervous freshman emails to respond to. 

It was a little surreal to be doing NYU’s busy work on the shores of the Batang Ai reservoir, in a high-end resort built into the hillside after the style of the local Iban longhouses, which had a six star rating, a heli-pad, and its own secondary rainforest. But she knew first-hand how surreal life on the fringes of the Tyersall shipping empire could be.

 

~

 

When she’d first returned to New York, she’d thought she’d managed to put that family behind her for good. She’d loved Nick enough to say no to him, had burned rubber out of Singapore and hadn’t let herself look back. He'd come after her, of course, but she’d had enough self-regard to send him away again.

She hadn’t had the heart to send his cousin away, though. 

Astrid had brought exactly one suitcase and her toddler and her broken heart with her to Manhattan, which was as far away from Michael as she could legitimately get. The family owned brownstones in Tribeca and penthouses on the Upper East Side and a majority share in the Peninsula Hotel, but Astrid and Cassian moved into the apartment down the hall from Rachel’s modest walk-up in Washington Heights. They spent the months leading up to Astrid’s divorce sitting on Rachel’s sofa, watching Star Trek reruns and eating ice cream out of the tub like some hackneyed Bridget Jones-esque post-break-up montage.

They didn’t talk about each other’s break-ups. Astrid signed up for an art history course at Columbia and bypassed the years-long waiting list to enrol Cassian at the prestigious Westside Episcopal preschool; she turned down a personal invitation from the Chair of the Met to join its fund-raising board. When Rachel couldn’t face dealing with Nick’s things, Astrid helped Kerry pack them into two large boxes and Fedex them to Singapore. In turn, Rachel was there to hold Astrid’s hand through the many billable hours’ worth of premium matrimonial lawyer time that culminated in face-to-face settlement negotiations at Shearman & Sterling’s Third Avenue offices. 

It had been barely six months since the fateful dinner party at Tyersall Park, but Michael seemed years older, his broad shoulders sunken with self-doubt and self-pity. 

“Not an excuse, but her family never gave me a chance,” he’d said, tightly, to the lawyers; he couldn’t even face Astrid. “I wasn’t one of them. I’d never be good enough. Guess I finally proved them right.” 

With Astrid clinging to her hand as tightly as if it was a lifeline, it wasn’t hard to feel the surge of protective anger. But the truth was, when Rachel looked across the polished conference room table at the shame and misery in Michael’s handsome face, it was all too easy to see what she might herself have become. 

“Nonsense. You would never have let them break you,” Kerry said, later, when Rachel finally gave voice to this hidden fear. 

Rachel wasn’t so sure. She knew she was pretty tough, but even the strongest markets broke down eventually if you subjected them to enough cycles of repeated stress.

That went double for Astrid; as the weeks of negotiation drew on, the stresses of dealing with Michael and keeping up a brave front for Cassian seemed to wear her down. She cut her classes, and crept through Rachel’s apartment like a ghost of her former self. But when the papers were finally signed, she emerged from under her burdens fully energized. 

In the months that followed, Astrid blazed through her final papers and graduated at the top of her cohort. She fired up the Met Ball red carpet in vintage Dior, with Rachel as her date (dressed in a last-minute order from _shopbop.com_ ). And she embarked at last on the Asian non-profit that she’d never found time to start before — to improve infrastructure and education in rural villages while preserving their traditions and ways of life. She began bringing legal documents and architectural drawings to their Star Trek marathon sessions, and picking Rachel’s brain over business plans. After two years, the Leong Foundation had established a dozen schools and programs in remote communities across South East Asia. 

The year Cassian started boarding school, Astrid left the States to devote herself to the foundation’s work. She moved from school to school, staying for months at a time in remote villages in East Malaysia and Thailand and Laos, from which Rachel would get weekly emails and the occasional text via a host of different service providers. 

Rachel had thought sending your seven-year-old away to study in some freezing old castle far away from civilization only happened in Harry Potter movies, but apparently the Young clan had been doing this for the last two generations. Astrid had gone to Cheltenham, which she said had been slightly less remote and somewhat less cold; clearly this was how she’d developed an affinity for far-off places. 

New York seemed emptier without her. 

It was around this time that Rachel realized she’d stopped missing Nick. 

Every so often, her ever-gallant ex would have care packages sent to her and to Kerry; during the divorce proceedings he'd sent flowers to Astrid every week, together with offers to have Michael’s legs broken, which had made his cousin laugh and cry at the same time. 

This Christmas, he’d sent a Fortnum & Masons hamper, and accompanying it had been, astoundingly, a gift from Eleanor. A vintage mahjonng set from Christie’s — with fitted trays and a leather carrying case, the pieces of bone and bamboo inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl.

The card read: _I never thanked you for the game. Hopefully you will accept this belated gift, along with my deep gratitude._

“Hah!” Rachel had found herself raising her fists in victory. She’d never thought she would welcome anything from Eleanor, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that had changed — more, that Eleanor’s gift had made her smile. 

Of course, her self-satisfaction at having gotten over Nick had soured a bit when she realized she’d started missing Astrid instead. 

On the last day before winter break, Rachel had gotten a ping on Telegram.

_The family wants Cassian and me to join them in Verbier, but I can’t leave the Batang Valley during the monsoon season. I’ll be in Sarawak for New Year’s. Join me?_

Rachel glanced across at her new mahjonng set. The thought of Eleanor and the Young family made her hesitate. But then, even though there were some games you ended up losing, it didn’t mean you should stop playing altogether. Plus, any sane person would jump at the chance to escape sub-zero New York.

 

~

 

Which was how Rachel had found herself in unspoiled East Malaysia, wrestling with the wifi and back in the rarefied circles of the family she’d once decided to leave. Astrid had been glad to see her, but she’d been preoccupied with work in the village, and seemed to prefer not to spend her time in the resort.

On Week Two, Rachel decided she had had enough of the beauty treatments on offer at the full-service spa and being waited on hand and foot. She threw some clothes into a backpack, and ventured out into the rainforest in search of Astrid. 

It took three hours to travel from the air-conditioned comforts of the resort into the remote Iban kampong where the foundation was headquartered — first on a motorbike driven by hotel staff, and then via longboat up the Batang Ai river. The air was thick with humidity and mosquitoes. As the boat drifted past rainforest vegetation and tiny settlements and fish farms, Rachel felt her tension start to lift like cloud cover. By the time she reached the village, she felt as if she’d just enjoyed all the spa massages rolled into one. 

The Iban longhouses stood on stilts upstream from the reservoir, on the banks of the river — long, high-roofed wooden structures, with reed mats on the floors and colourful tribal coverings on the walls. Ten houses, divided into makeshift apartments and living quarters, accommodated the entire village community. The foundation’s school occupied the house at the end, on the edge of the river where it was spanned by a short bridge that led to the neighboring village. 

Astrid came to greet her. She’d shed her couture and her Louboutins, dressed simply in a tee-shirt and slippers and the Iban skirt of bright, woven cotton. Her thick hair was coiled at the nape of her neck in a utilitarian knot; her perfect skin was free of all traces of makeup. When they embraced, Rachel could feel how relaxed and pliant her body was, so different from how she’d been in intense, focused New York and the insanity of Singapore.

“Welcome home,” Astrid said. Her tone was teasing, but Rachel felt something stir under her own sweaty tee-shirt, inside her chest.

In Iban villages, it seemed the Tuai Rumah or headman ran the show, but in this one, Astrid held the pride of place. Rachel was no sociologist, but even she could see what a big deal this was — that an older Iban man would cede authority to this young Straits Chinese woman, who was an outsider to them.

The village threw a banquet that night to celebrate Rachel’s arrival. Prawns caught from the river, fruit bats caught from the trees, rice cooked in fresh green bamboo chopped from the jungle, and indigenous greens harvested from the foundation’s eco-garden. A pig had been speared by one of the kampong’s strongmen and was roasting on a spit on the beach. Everyone sat in a circle in the main room, with Astrid given the seat of honor. Rachel was introduced to rice wine and an eye-watering local moonshine called Langkau. 

As the night progressed, drums and instruments were brought out and everyone, young and old, got up to dance. A young Iban woman helped Rachel to her feet and taught her the traditional steps. Rachel let the alcohol and the drum beat take her far away from herself, until her sides ached from dancing and her cheeks from smiling. It had been a long time since she’d done either.

Eventually she wandered away from the dancers to the entrance of the longhouse. She found Astrid sitting on the steps, overlooking the sandy riverbank and the shine of the moon on the water. 

She settled in beside her, remembering the last time they’d sat under moonlight, years ago, on a beach in faraway Singapore. They’d both changed so much since then.

Astrid looked sidelong at her. “Too much dancing?” 

“Need a break. Everyone here is in really good shape!” Like Astrid was herself, as Rachel could see: lithe figure outlined in the moonlight, so beautiful it would have taken a marathon runner’s breath away.

“It’s in their culture. The Ibans used to be the hunters and adventurers of Sarawak. Not so long ago, they’d be travelling from place to place, looking for fertile land and good hunting, taking the whole village with them if they needed to.”

Rachel asked, “Do people leave the tribe? To get jobs in Kuching or in West Malaysia, for kids to go to university? Or to get married?”

“Sometimes? But more often than not, they return to the tribe. There’s a sense of community in the kampongs. Each tribe is its own family.”

Astrid’s eyes searched Rachel’s face intently, as if looking for something. Rachel had no idea what it was.

Family. Community. These meant different things, out here in the rainforest. Different from how Astrid’s family meant them, that was for sure. 

“Didn’t Nick say you guys had Iban blood from somewhere?”

Astrid shrugged. “The Shangs came from Beijing, but apparently we might have acquired some Straits from the Young side? Aya Tuai Rumah says he can sense my Iban heritage, but then again Aya says lots of things.”

“You speak Iban?” But of course she did; Astrid spoke six languages, which was four more than Rachel had ever aspired to.

They sat together in the moonlight for a long time, in a silence thick with the sound of mosquitoes and the rushing river, and then Astrid said, “Come on, you’re with me.”

Astrid’s sleeping quarters was on the far end of the tenth longhouse, beside the school. It was a far cry from the silk and gold-inlaid oak of the resort, bare of ornamentation save for a photo of Cassian and another of her parents. 

Rachel washed from the communal hose in the women’s area, and lay down beside Astrid on the reed mat. She lay awake for a long time, listening to Astrid’s even breathing in sleep.

 

~

 

Family. Community. These meant different things out here. 

The foundation had an ongoing project to sustainably upgrade the power supply from the hydroelectric dam downriver, so Rachel could keep her phone charged, but she soon gave up sending anything other than the occasional text to Kerry. Instead, she went for long hikes in the forest. She followed Astrid on her rounds at the school and the site of the power project. She watched the fishermen head out in the morning on their longboats and the women working in the fields in the afternoon and the grandmothers tending to the little ones at dusk — in this community, all the tribes and families were one.

One morning, Astrid took her to the Ensualai Falls. Four hours of steep trekking up rocks and primordial rainforest, and they were there, looking up at the soaring majesty of the waterfall. Rachel had never seen anything like it: the dipterocarp forestation with drooping trees overhanging the river, the peat vegetation, the brilliant colours of wild orchids and flora, the dramatic sweep of rocks and amid them, the waters falling straight down in roaring liquid sheets of white and green.

This close to the waterfall, mosquitoes were scarce; instead, Rachel heard the cry of birds — Brahminy kites, Astrid told her, and protected species of hornbill.

“Come with me,” and Astrid led her across the slippery rocks until they were in the narrow rock alcove behind the fall itself. The spray drenched their clothes and hair and soaked both of them to their skin.

It was deafening. This close to the thundering water, buffeted by the deluge, Rachel could hardly catch her breath or open her eyes. Beside her, she could dimly make out Astrid’s laughter, and glimpses of Astrid’s face, turned up to the spray. The clasp of Astrid’s fingers seemed the only solid thing in the world. 

They stood together under the waterfall, and above the roar of the water Rachel could hear the urgent sound of her own heart.

 

~

 

The day before New Year’s, there was a torrential downpour. When Rachel and Astrid woke up the crops were all flooded. The longboats that hadn’t been brought onshore had been smashed to bits on the river rocks, and the bridge had a section that had been washed away.

“Oh dear,” Astrid said, when the headman came to tell her the news and they’d all gone to see for themselves. “Tonight is the big celebration. Everyone in the next village was going to come!”

Rachel inspected the remnants of the broken bridge, which looked too fragile to bear anyone’s weight, let alone that of an entire village. “Should we call the engineers on the dam project to come in to look at this?”

“The guys have gone into Miri for New Year’s,” Astrid said, and the Tuai Rumah shook his head. 

“No need for engineers. We have been doing this for all of our lives.”

It seemed Asian tribesmen had really been building bamboo bridges for centuries, across Sarawak and Thailand and Indochina. The bridges were put together much in the same way as they would have been a hundred or five hundred years ago — using a very large species of bamboo grown on both banks of the river near each bridge, which would bend with the wind, but wouldn’t break like oak or other kinds of wood. Rope or hemp would be used to hold the weight of the bamboo and bind it together. Large posts would be driven into the ground to hold up the main frame of the bridge and weighed down with baskets of rocks, the bamboo stalks laid down to form the main beam underfoot, and one to two levels of handrail would be raised on either side.

There were no engineers with fancy instruments or computer models to dictate the construction work. The way to join the bamboo together, to lash the posts at forty-five degree angles to the ground, had been passed from generation to generation. It seemed some traditional technology never went out of fashion.

The other work in the village was put on hold. All the able-bodied tribespeople came together to rebuild the bridge in time for the celebration.

Rachel worked alongside young and old, men and women, in comparative silence. Around them, the village had stilled, and all was filled with companionable quiet — the bending trees, the swaying bamboo, the sultry rainforest air cooled by the river. The hundred souls bending their effort to one task: rebuilding this bridge that was held together by more than just hemp and rope. 

Hard at work, the village was held together by the same thing. Family. Community. A tribe that had found a way to deal with the stresses of modern life, to change for the better, and to retain, at its very core, its heart.

Up to her waist in water, entirely soaked through by the river and the light rain, Rachel felt curiously lighter. It could just be that, thanks to all this hiking and physical labor, she was in the best shape of her life — or it could be something else.

By nightfall, the bridge had been repaired. It looked good as new: or rather, it looked as if the next breeze would knock it over, but she had watched Astrid and the other men traverse it without fear. Clearly, it was much stronger than it looked.

Astrid saw her staring, and crossed over to her side. Her hair stuck damply to her forehead, her wet clothes stained with grass and bamboo sap and river water, and she had never looked more radiant. The tribesmen made way for her, the children clung, giggling, to her sodden skirts. She was holding hands with one of them, a little boy with large eyes who reminded Rachel of Cassian.

“Looks like the other village will get to the party after all! Except we’ve been so busy fixing the bridge that nobody’s had time to cook...”

Astrid shrugged. “The others will bring food. And when they get here, we’ll all rustle up something together. It’s not about the party, it’s about getting together as a family.”

Someone called over in Iban; the boy pulled away from Astrid and ran off after his friends. They watched him go, outlined in the sunset.

Rachel wondered whether to say it, and then figured: why the hell not. “Speaking of family, I wonder how yours is enjoying New Year’s Eve in Verbier.”

Astrid shrugged again, but she was still smiling. It looked like someone else was feeling lighter, too. “Cassian texted earlier. He says he’s had enough of snow in Gordonstoun to want to see it during the holidays as well.” 

She paused, and looked sidelong at Rachel: that searching look that Rachel hadn’t understood before. “You know, maybe I was wrong about boarding school. Just because our family’s been doing things for generations doesn’t mean it’s right.” 

“Good for you,” Rachel said, with feeling. “Your family might think they know what’s best, but only you’d really know for sure.”

They were quiet for another moment, watching the sun set over the bustling village, the tribesfolk setting about preparations for the celebration. Then Astrid said: “You know, all our obsession with what’s best for our family, our business, our reputation? All of this is family, too.”

Rachel thought she could finally see what Astrid was planning. It would be a hard thing for a Young to take the road less travelled, but if there was any member of that family who could make it a success, her money would be on Astrid every time. 

“It’s not going to be an easy sell to your mom.” She didn’t mention Eleanor. She didn’t have to. She had understood exactly what she’d been giving up from the moment she’d discarded that bamboo tile on the mahjonng table for Eleanor to find. She’d known she would be taking that one for Nick, and for Nick’s family. She was glad Astrid wouldn’t need to take anything from them any longer.

On the horizon, the moon began to rise. Absently, Astrid tried to wring the water from her wet hair. She nodded at the repaired bridge and said, “You know, we’re pretty lucky out here. Bamboo bridges in lower-lying regions, like Luang Prabang in Laos, or in Koh Pen where our Cambodian school is, get washed away every year during the rainy season when the Mekong river floods. The villagers there rebuild within a week after the flood subsides.”

“They rebuild every year?” It seemed like an unthinkable act of faith to build, knowing that what was built would be inevitably destroyed, and building anyway.

“Seems so.” Astrid turned from the bridge to look at Rachel. Her serious eyes conveyed a wealth of different emotions that Rachel couldn’t interpret; it was easier to keep looking at the bridge.

“Hopefully ours will stand.” In the distance, Rachel could see pinpricks of light and indistinct shapes of bright clothing as the tribespeople from the other village started to cross the bridge, carrying with them food offerings for the celebrations to come. Under the moonlight, the bamboo structure seemed even more fragile than ever, too weak and insubstantial to hold the hopes of so many. 

“What happens if the monsoon washes it away again?”

Astrid slid her hand gently on top of Rachel’s, with an undisguised intent that Rachel couldn’t ignore any longer. “Then we’ll build it again, as many times as we have to.”

Maybe nothing would ever be strong enough to resist the floods, but the key to survival lay in rebuilding after the storm had passed.

Astrid’s fingers were smooth and yielding, but under the soft skin was an unbreakable core of strength. Away from the Youngs, against the odds, she’d managed to rebuild the meaning of family, of community, and this time she’d made a space for Rachel at her side. 

She took a step closer. Her eyes shone fiercely in the gathering dusk, like a promise that nobody would ever be judged for not being enough.

Rachel let out the breath she’d been holding, and leaned in to kiss her at last.

**Author's Note:**

> The Chinese saying that’s attributed to Confucius is: "The green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm"; a paraphrase from [Ch 76 of the Tao Te Ching](https://www.laotzu.xyz/chapter/display?id=76).
> 
> The card Rachel discards in the movie’s [climatic mahjonng game](https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/8/17/17723242/crazy-rich-asians-movie-mahjong) is the eight of bamboo. 
> 
> [Prince Charles’ old school](https://www.ukboardingschools.com/schools/gordonstoun/).
> 
> The Iban villages (and the Hilton) near [Batang Ai](http://www.borneo.com.au/sarawak/sarawak-information/batang-ai). The kampong details borrow from [a story on Bidayuh tribe villages ](https://jedrzejmajewski.wordpress.com/sarawak/bengoh-valley-bamboo-bridges/), as well as [this technique](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_kl62D55Xo). Hopefully not a hot mess (I’m Straits, though not Iban); any errors in setting are solely mine.


End file.
